A judge has said a Salisbury company should be “appalled” that it allowed its employees to implement an unsafe method of work, which “undoubtedly” led to the death of a migrant worker.
Joszef Trhan, 33, was working at C Bialek Ltd’s (trading as CB Skips) sorting yard in Salisbury, when the incident took place on 12 February 2008, which also happened to be his birthday and the same date that his father had died years earlier.
Mr Trhan had been employed to sort through waste at the site but he also carried out maintenance work on yard-based vehicles. On the day of the incident he was attempting to repair the wheel of a loading shovel, which had a puncture.
Firstly, he removed the split-rim wheel and then repaired the puncture on the inner tube. When he tried to place the tube around the wheel rim the interlocking components of the rim fell apart. It had become common practice at the site to weld the two parts together rather than repair the lock clip, which was meant to hold them in place. But if the components are not secured exactly into place before the inner-tube is inflated, they can later separate, allowing the inner-tube to burst, which in turn causes a violent blast of compressed air to escape.
Once he had welded the parts together he inflated the inner tube and placed the wheel back on the vehicle. When he knelt down to tighten the wheel nuts, the welds suddenly failed and caused the inner-tube to rupture. The blast of compressed air propelled the metal components outwards, striking him in the head and body. The blast then launched him into the air and propelled him back five metres. He struck a similar vehicle headfirst, and suffered serious head injuries. He died later in hospital.
The HSE’s investigation found that the company had failed to carry out a risk assessment for the work and had not trained workers how to do the job safely. As a result, staff had created their own method of work and were not supervised when regularly making the repairs.
The day after the incident, the HSE issued two Prohibition Notices, which required the vehicle to be removed from service, as it didn’t have any brakes and was in a poor condition. It also ordered the company to stop allowing staff to change tyres on vehicles until they had received proper training.
HSE inspector Liam Osbourne said: “CB Skips failed to protect Mr Trhan in a number of ways; essentially, they didn't know what was going on in their own yard.
“Workplaces using split-rim wheels need to appreciate that if these wheels are not in perfect condition and people are not fully trained in their repair, their workers could be working near a bomb waiting to go off at any moment. It was pure chance that nobody else was near the wheel when it exploded, as this incident could have easily led to more deaths and injuries.
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CB Skips appeared at Salisbury Crown Court on 26 July and pleaded guilty to breaching s2(1) of the HSWA 1974. It was fined £150,000 and ordered to pay £55,000 in costs.
In mitigation, the company accepted that it was culpable but stressed that it had no previous convictions. It has subsequently appointed a competent person to be responsible for health and safety at the site and it has also employed a qualified tyre fitter. A fresh risk assessment was carried out and staff were provided with training. All work at the site is now properly supervised.
During sentencing, Judge Paul Garlick said: “This accident was highly foreseeable. For some years the method of work adopted by CB Skips was unsafe. Other untrained employees passed on their limited and unsafe knowledge to Mr Trhan. The company should be appalled; this caused an unsafe system of work to be adopted, which undoubtedly would have led to a fatality. No training was given to employees and the system of work adopted was a highly dangerous way of doing this work.
“The factors in this case point to one of the most serious offences that there can be under this legislation, and I have dealt with it accordingly.”
